Different Dimension Panic!
by A Darker Dari
Summary: Joey and Kaiba are forced into a duel with a crazy Alister lookalike who claims to be trying to take over the world! Do they have what it takes to defeat him before they are sent to a different dimension? Based loosely off of a crazy dream I had...


"Almost done!" Yugi Moto exclaimed as he dipped his brush back into the big paint bucket again.

Joey Wheeler pulled a piece of plastic cover off the edge of a window, laughing. "What do you mean, almost, Yugi?" he asked. "It is done! And about time too!"

The two of them, along with their friends Tristan and Tea, had been hard at work helping Joey paint his new apartment for the past couple of days. When Joey moved out, they would have to paint it back to its original bland white color, but for now, he could enjoy a little more color than his old apartment that he'd shared with his father had had.

Yugi grinned, then turned back to the wall and, with a slightly different color than the rest of the wall, painted the words "Joseph Wheeler" in small print on one edge. Then, below it, he added, "Joey".

Tristan and Tea both laughed and Joey shook his head again at his friend's antics. He was about to go over and paint over the words with the original color again, (he wasn't so proud as to need his name written on his walls), when a knock at the door interrupted him.

Confused as to who might be at the door, seeing as all his friends were already here, he wandered over and pulled it open. There was nobody there, but on the wall of the hallway directly across from his door, there was a note taped to the wall. He glanced both ways down the hallway, but saw nobody.

He walked over and pulled the note off the wall. His eyes widened in shock as he read it. "Serenity..." He shook himself, then called back into the apartment. "Hey, guys? I'll be right back. I need to take care of something!"

Yugi came to the door, hearing the panic in Joey's voice. "Take care of what?"

But Joey had already pulled his shoes and jacket on and raced down the hallway, heading out to the parking lot and jumping into his little car. Without even a backwards glance or a wave goodbye to his friends, Joey pealed out of the parking lot and was gone.

Ahead of him in the distance, Joey could see the motorcycle he'd seen leaving the parking lot mere minutes before he had. He stepped on the gas, trying to catch up to it, but it was somehow always ahead of him. The sky was beginning to grow dark, and both he and the motorcycle rider flipped their lights on.

This left Joey feeling confused. Why would the motorcycle rider turn on his lights if he was trying to lose him? With the lights, Joey could easily see and follow him. Joey growled to himself. "He must be trying to lead me somewhere," he concluded.

Suddenly, Joey blinked. Up ahead, the motorcycle he had been chasing appeared to have doubled, becoming two motorcycles. Then he realized what had happened. A second motorcycle had pulled up beside the first, and the two were riding alongside each other.

Frustrated, Joey stomped on the gas again, pulling a little closer to the two he was chasing. A little closer. A little closer. Now he could read the license plates on both cycles.

Then, abruptly, both motorcycles swerved in opposite directions and turned sideways, skidding to a stop on either side of the road. Surprised, Joey slammed on the brakes, bringing his own car to a stop as well.

Both motorcycle riders got off the bikes and Joey got out of the car, holding up the note furiously. "What is the meaning of this? Who are you and where is my sister?"

The motorcycle rider to his left began to laugh. "Threaten the younger siblings, and the ones you want come running to the rescue. It works every time." He pulled off his helmet, revealing magenta hair that flipped away from his face.

Joey frowned. "Hang on, you're part of Dartz's gang of thugs!"

The other motorcycle rider growled, ripping off his own helmet. "You again! I thought I got rid of you the last time you came around, Alister!"

Joey stared, completely in surprise. "Kaiba? What in the world are you doing here?"

Kaiba ignored him, instead rounding on the former Doom Biker. "You'd better have a good explanation for ordering me out here, you creep. What did you do to Mokuba?"

Alister laughed again. "Your siblings are both perfectly fine. Or at least they will be unless you two decide not to cooperate. I see you both followed my instructions to come alone."

"What do you want from us, Alister?" Joey demanded.

The other man shook his head. "Alister? Who is Alister?" He looked up and smirked at them. "Ah, you must be referring to the one whose body I stole. And weren't those other two so surprised when their own best friend attacked them."

Joey recoiled in horror. Kaiba scowled, repeating Joey's question. "I don't care who you are, what do you want with me?"

"I want you eliminated, Seto Kaiba," the other said wickedly. "You, and Joseph here, and the one called Yugi."

"What? Why?" Joey asked in shock, taking a step backwards.

The amusement on the man's face turned abruptly to anger. "Because you're in my way. I wish to take complete control of this world, and for reasons I cannot fathom, you three are tied into the web of protection around it. Now, enough talk! Let's duel!"

He held his left arm up to his chest and the air around it shimmered briefly. A moment later, a duel disk exactly like those of the Doom Bikers' had appeared on his wrist. It lit up with its green symbols and activated, the counter on the top showing 4000.

Joey stared at him, then glanced over at Kaiba, who was watching all this with an unreadable look on his face, his arms folded almost boredly. He returned his attention to the other man. "Duel?" he exclaimed in disbelief. "You say you want us eliminated, and the way you're doing that is with a card game?"

"All just a part of taking apart the web. Don't ask me why this Duel Monsters game is so important to this world, but it is, and you three, as the top duelists, are what hold it all together." The other man scowled at them. "I was able to lure you two away, and once I am finished with you, I shall go after my last victim. Then the powers of this world will be mine, to add to the powers of all the other worlds I have conquered!"

He stretched out his right hand towards the other two and a wave appeared in the air, coming from his hand and crashing into Joey and Kaiba. Both instinctively brought their hands up to protect their faces, but the only thing the wave had done was to make both of their duel disks appear on their arms.

Joey blinked down at his, recognizing by various scratches along the sides that this was in fact his duel disk. He took out his deck and looked through it, making sure they were all there. With this confirmed, he put the shuffled the deck and shoved it back into the duel disk, glancing over at Kaiba to see what he was doing.

He had also taken his deck out of the duel disk and looked it over, probably checking to make sure the cards he needed for his various combos were still there, and had placed it back in the duel disk. He glanced over at Joey. "This duel may have us working together, Wheeler, but you'd better stay out of my way."

Joey scowled. "Just as long as you stay out of my way, rich boy!" He turned back to the other man, activating his duel disk and drawing five cards for his starting hand. Kaiba did the same and the other man smirked.

"I'll go first then, shall I?" He drew his cards and laid two cards face down, placing one monster in defense mode. "Your move."

Kaiba drew a card for his turn and Joey glared at him. "He didn't say which of us would go next, Kaiba!"

"Then it's just as well that I made a decision, or we'd be standing here arguing about it instead of moving on. I play three cards face down, and Vorse Raider in attack mode. Vorse Raider, attack his face down card!"

The holographic warrior appeared on the field and slashed downward at the face down monster. A strange monster that neither of them had ever seen before appeared briefly before getting sliced in two and disappearing into the graveyard.

"Now it's my turn!" Joey drew his card and grinned at it. "I play my Goblin Attack Force in attack mode! Goblins, attack his life points directly!"

"Negate Attack," the other man said calmly, activating one of his two face downs.

"Trap Jammer!" Kaiba announced, smirking.

"I'll also activate Trap Jammer, then." The other smirked as well, activating his other card.

Trap Jammer canceled Trap Jammer, so the Negate Attack worked, stopping Joey's Goblin Attack Force right in its tracks.

Joey frowned at Kaiba. "Why are you helping me?" he wondered.

Kaiba didn't even look at him. "I want this guy defeated quickly, and if that means helping you, I'll do it. Don't take it too personally, mutt. Finish your move."

Joey growled. "I'm done."

The other man drew a card. "The end is near for you two," he predicted. "No one has yet been able to make it past this card. This will drain your life points, and eliminate you all at once!"

"What are you talking about?" Kaiba demanded.

"You will see. Activate magic card! Dimensional Destruction!" He slammed the card into the duel disk's magic/trap card slot and pushed the button to activate it. A large, dark void appeared on the field, creating a whirlwind that whipped dust up everywhere. Joey and Kaiba brought their arms up to shield their eyes.

"What is that thing?" Joey yelled.

"I don't know, but I get the feeling we're about to find out!" Kaiba answered.

The void expanded until in enveloped the entire playing field, obscuring everyone's vision. In the darkness, the two duelists heard the other man yelling to them. "When my Twisted Hero monster card is in the graveyard, I can activate this magic card. During each of my End Phases, I can simply choose one of you and send you spiraling into another dimension!"

The darkness cleared, revealing a large green circle around them all, looking very like the Orichalcos symbol of the Doom Bikers, with minute changes. The other man smirked at them both. "You're finished. I finish my turn, entering my end phase. The best strategy is to get rid of the stronger duelist first. I choose you, Seto Kaiba!"

The outer edges of the circle sparked and jumped, emitting a large ring of crackling green lightning. The ring contracted, passing through Joey and the other man to circle Kaiba, who simply looked surprised.

The ring of lightning paused, almost as if hesitating, then leaped into Kaiba, becoming a giant lightning ball. For an instant, Kaiba's entire body glowed, and then the ball exploded outward, leaving him standing, shocked and smoking. Slowly, he collapsed to his knees, then fell forward.

"Kaiba!" Joey ran to his side, flipping him over onto his back. Kaiba's eyes were closed, but he was breathing shallowly, and he still had a pulse. The life point counter on his duel disk read zero, then blinked off. "What did you do to him?"

The other man frowned, his face holding an expression of confusion. "Well, that's never happened before. Usually when I send people to other dimensions, their whole body goes with them. I guess Kaiba was so stabilized in this dimension, that only his mind was banished..."

Joey stared at him in shock, then looked back down at his rival. "You sent his mind to another dimension??"

The other regained his composure. "I did, and now it looks like it's your turn, Joseph! Make your move, so I can destroy you too!"

Joey grit his teeth, standing up slowly and facing the other man. "All right, you're going to pay for this! You've left yourself wide open for a direct attack! I play Rocket Warrior in attack mode! Rocket Warrior, attack!"

The other man grunted as the attack hit him, dropping his life points.

"And now, Goblin Attack Force, it's your turn! Attack!"

The other man's life points dropped. And stopped at 300. He looked up at Joey and laughed. "It doesn't matter! I still have life points left, and now you've run out of attacks! All I have to do is end my turn, and I'll win!"

Joey frowned, looking over the cards in his hand, before having to admit that the other man was right. There was nothing else he could have done, it was the best he had... And he had failed.

"I... I end my turn," he said in defeat, bowing his head.

The other man laughed, drawing a card for his turn. "Now I end my turn, moving into my end phase! You lose!"

The edges of the circle let out more green electricity, which slowly circled Joey and cut off any retreat.

"Joey!!" a familiar voice called.

Joey looked up in time to see Yugi, Tea, and Tristan standing there. They must have arrived sometime during the last stages of the duel without him noticing. He smiled weakly at them. "Sorry guys... I lost..."

"And now you will be sent to another dimension, just like Seto Kaiba!" the other man yelled gleefully. He stretched out his hand toward Joey. "Say goodbye to Joey Wheeler!"

The lightning ring jumped into Joey's body. An immense pain like he had never felt before flooded into every inch of him and he yelled in pain. A bright light flooded his eyes as the ball of energy exploded outward.

For an instant, he could still see his friends standing there, watching him in shock, then everything went dark, and he collapsed.

"Joey!!!" As the holograms of the duel disappeared into nothing, Yugi ran to his friend's side. "What did you do to him?"

The other man sighed dramatically, trying to hide the fact that he was breathing heavily and clutching his chest. "Must I explain this again? I sent his mind to another dimension! His body may still be here, but he is no longer in my way! I'll be back for you later, Yugi Moto. Just you wait!"

With that, the Alister look-alike turned and jumped back onto his motorcycle, quickly disappearing into the night.

"Another dimension?" Tea wondered aloud. "What's that supposed to mean??"

Tristan reached down and began shaking his friend. "Come on, Joey! Wake up!"

Just then, Yugi noticed Kaiba lying a short ways away. "Look guys! Kaiba's here too! Looks like he's in the same condition as Joey!"

Tristan frowned. "Why would Kaiba be here? For that matter, what made Joey race out here so fast?"

"Look," Tea pulled a piece of paper out of Joey's jacket pocket. "It says, 'I have your sister, Serenity, and if you don't cooperate, she is in danger. I'm leaving the parking lot now, catch me if you can. Come alone.'"

"What? That creep has Serenity?" Tristan growled.

"And probably Mokuba too, if Kaiba's here," Yugi added darkly.

Suddenly Joey groaned, his eyes fluttering open. "Wha...? What happened?"

"Joey!" They all cried in relief. Maybe whatever that guy had done to their friend hadn't worked after all.

"Are you okay, buddy?" Tristan asked, hauling his friend into a sitting position.

Joey blinked at them. "Why wouldn't I be ok?" he inquired, his voice sounding somewhat strange. "What're we doin out here?"

"You and Kaiba were in a duel," Yugi explained, "with some guy who told us that when you lost, you'd be sent to a different dimension. When the duel ended, he ran off, but apparently you're still here..."

Tiredly, Joey looked around, still seeming to be confused. "A duel? With Kaiba?" He shook his head. "I don't remember any duel..."

"Well, what do you remember, then?" Tristan demanded. "We weren't here for the whole thing, so any little bit you remember helps."

Joey looked lost, then shrugged. "Sorry Tristan. I dunno, my head's a bit fuzzy."

Yugi bit his lip. "You guys stay here. I'm going to go check on Kaiba..."

"Whatever ya say, Yuge." Joey said, a little sleepily. Tristan gave him an odd look. He definitely wasn't acting quite like himself.

The shorter boy got up and went over to Kaiba, who was apparently still out cold. Quickly, he checked his vital signs and made sure he was still alive. Then, hesitantly, he shook Kaiba's shoulder gently. "Kaiba? You in there?"

Kaiba let out a soft groan, but didn't move. Slowly, his eyes fluttered open. "Did anybody catch the license plate of the train that hit me?" he inquired dully, bringing one hand up to his forehead.

"Yeah, it was D-U-E-L," Tristan supplied.

Kaiba lifted himself to a sitting position, waving Yugi away when he tried to help him up. He looked himself over and blinked. "Why am I wearing this coat?" he muttered. Shaking his head to clear it, he looked over at Tristan. "A duel with who?"

"We don't know who he was," Yugi admitted. "We had hoped that you or Joey could tell us that."

Kaiba frowned. "What does Wheeler have to do with this?"

"Don't tell me you don't remember the duel either!" Tristan exclaimed. "You and Joey were battling against some weirdo who said he was going to send you both to a different dimension."

The older boy scoffed, trying to get to his feet now. "More hocus pocus nonsense," he muttered.

Yugi nodded. "In this case, you're right. Whatever he did, it doesn't seem to have worked, except that neither of you can remember the duel."

"That and Joey appears to have picked up some New York accent," Tristan commented.

Yugi and Tea both blinked and Joey looked a little startled. "He what?" Yugi asked.

"Tristan, what're you talkin about?" Joey demanded. "I've always had a Boston accent. I'm from New York, ya know."

Tristan shook his head in slight disbelief. "You haven't had one for as long as I've known you, and we grew up here as kids."

Kaiba shook his head. "I don't know what you're talking about either, Tristan. I don't often socialize with Yugi or his group of friends, but every time I've seen you, the mutt's had that accent."

"Yeah, my accent's nothin new. I think you need yer head checked. And..." Then he realized what Kaiba had called him, "And don't call me a mutt!"

Kaiba only smirked.

Tristan, Yugi, and Tea were baffled. Tea spoke up. "Even earlier today, while we were all at his apartment, Joey didn't have an accent. He sounded normal. It's only been after the duel that he-"

Joey interrupted her. "Wait a minute, you were all at my apartment? What were ya doin there?"

Yugi gave him a strange look. "We were painting. Remember?" He showed Joey his paint streaked hands and clothes.

"Painting?" Joey looked almost panicked. He scrambled to his feet. "What the heck were ya doing that for? Don't you know what my dad'll do to ya if he sees that?"

Suddenly, Yugi realized something. "Hang on a second, guys. Joey, calm down, I think I've figured this out! Kaiba, what do you remember from right before you woke up here?"

Kaiba frowned. "Why is that relevant?"

"It is." Yugi insisted.

Kaiba shrugged. "I was working in my office. I was just thinking about turning in for the night when I suddenly blacked out."

"I thought maybe that would be the case." Yugi said softly. "Guys, I don't think these are _our_ Joey and Kaiba..."

Joey looked blankly at him. "Say what?"

"What are you talking about, Yugi?" Kaiba intoned.

Tristan and Tea only stared at their shorter friend.

Yugi took a breath. "Think about it. Neither of them actually remembers the duel, or anything leading up to it. Joey doesn't remember getting his own apartment, and he says he's had his accent for as long as he can remember."

"Yeah, so?"

"I think that whatever that guy did in that duel, instead of just sending Joey and Kaiba to a different dimension, it switched them with their other selves from that other dimension. These are actually two different people!"

* * *

Joey awoke to find himself lying on a carpeted floor. Slowly reorienting himself, he frowned, realizing that this was his old room, in the apartment that he had used to share with his father.

All of his things seemed to have magically reappeared back in the room, even though he and Tristan had spend the better part of a few days moving it all to the new apartment.

Holding his head, he stood up and glanced at the calendar on the wall. According to it, it was a Saturday in March. But he could have sworn that today was a Wednesday, and that it was July, during summer vacation.

He looked down at the various papers that were spread out across his desk. It was homework, dated in March. But this homework looked like stuff he had done at school years ago...

He glanced around the room again. Nothing was out of place, except for the desk chair, which was turned over as if somebody had fallen out of it.

"Man," he muttered to himself, rubbing the back of his head. "I guess that lightning thing hit me harder than I thought it did..."

Then he remembered what he had been doing right before he had blacked out. "That duel! With that guy who looked like Alister!"

He headed for the door, then stopped just before he turned the knob. If this was, as that guy had said, a different dimension, maybe he didn't want to know what was on the other side of that door. His father could sometimes be violent on the best of days. It was probably better not to push his luck.

He went out the window instead, landing on the roof of the below neighbor's balcony, and climbing down the nearby gutter to the ground. Joey knew that if he wanted any sort of explanation to all this, he'd probably need to find Yugi, and he'd definitely need to find Kaiba.

* * *

Kaiba awoke to find himself lying on a rather hard floor. Realizing that he was on the floor, he got himself up off the ground, rubbing the back of his head and wincing slightly as he found a bump there.

What had happened? Where was he?

Glancing around, the second question was easily answered. He was in the top floor of Kaiba Corp, where his office was located. On his computer screen, several graphs and charts had been uploaded. He had apparently been looking at them before he...

But why would he just randomly pass out? That had never happened before. He closed his eyes thinking, and then it came back to him.

The note that had been delivered, the wild chase to figure out where the guy had gone, finally catching up and forcing him off the road... Then Joey had shown up, shouting about his sister, and they had started a duel.

Then the guy started spouting nonsense about dimensions, and he had played that card...

Kaiba picked his chair up from where it had fallen on the ground and sat down in it, minimizing the strangely outdated charts that were on the screen and pulling up some basic card searches, looking for that card, 'Dimension Destruction.'

The searches came out empty. There was no card by that name. But then, that's what had happened when he had searched for Seal of Orichalcos years ago. It didn't technically exist, but the cards were official enough to be compatible with the duel disks.

While Kaiba didn't want to believe in this other dimension stuff that guy had mentioned, it seemed like his best lead to figuring out what was going on now, and how he had ended up in his office at KaibaCorp.

Pulling up all of his security programs, he made a swift check over of the main KaibaCorp areas. Everything was as it was when he had last seen it, save for in one of his Virtual Technologies room, where he had recently been creating a new Virtual World pod. The new pod didn't seem to be there any more.

Frowning, he pulled up a view screen of some of the security cameras in his mansion, relieved to find Mokuba at home in his bed. Mokuba, at least this Mokuba, was fine.

Kaiba shut down his computer and headed out the door. He had a sinking feeling that Yugi would be able to figure out what was going on here. And he needed to find Joey, to see if he knew any more about what had happened during that duel than he did.

* * *

... Okay, I had a dream the other night... It was a really weird dream, and it had a lot of different parts to it... If you've seen my Dream journal on my LJ, you know that I have lots of weird dreams... But for some reason, I was drawn to actually write this one down in fanfiction format, since most of it actually had the Yu-Gi-Oh characters.

To be honest, most of what made it into here wasn't what really was in my dream. For example, I myself was in the dream at first, I was sitting on a wooden bunk bed watching as everyone stood around and painted my room red. Then my dad wrote my name in big white letters on the wall. I complained, so in a corner he wrote my nickname instead. Then we looked out the window, where three motorcycles went by.

At that point, I stopped being in the dream, and I just watched the three motorcycles. I think at one point they went through this mall area, but I'm not sure. They came to a stop, and all of a sudden, Alister, Kaiba, and Joey were all dueling, standing in a glowing green circle like the Orichalcos. I couldn't figure out what was going on, but Joey had Rocket Warrior on the field, and suddenly he'd gotten hit by this big ball of green electricity.

He fell over, Kaiba yelled to him, but then ignored him, and then the dream cut away from the duel. Yugi and the gang were all standing over Joey as he regained consciousness, only to find that now he had a New York accent! That's when Yugi commented that whatever that attack had done, it must have switched Joey with an alternate dimension Joey. Then he wondered where Kaiba went.

Then I woke up.

... So in my fanfiction version, I took myself out of it, then filled in the gaps in the story. Some of the totally random things that got put in there, like the fact that it wasn't really Alister, or the fact that Joey had a car instead of a motorcycle, or that Kaiba got hit first and then Joey... I don't know where they came from, they got put in as I got to them. XD

I don't think I'm actually going to go anywhere with this story. XD It'll just be a random oneshot. Hence why I'm putting it on my Darker Dari account.


End file.
